Sunscreen uses the screen and the online space as a form of conversation between the individual (consumers), the collective (producers) and the state (economy), and considers our relationship with consumption, experience, distribution and exchange via an ongoing collection of 40 digital artworks as screensavers, created by artists with a connection to the East Midlands.

We want our users to share and upload pictures of these works as the appear on their computers via our Twitter, Facebook & Instagram pages:

We want to see and learn how we interact with these works on a day-to-day basis. How do they fit into our schedules? What do they reveal about our behaviour? How do they affect our subconscious production and communicate idleness?

Sunscreen will track and monitor our behaviour to assess which works are affecting our subconscious mind.

Sunscreen is a collective experience that feeds into the productivity of work and the consumption of leisure.

Each artists screensaver has been created as a response to the wider curatorial theme of EM15 at the 56th Venice Biennale, The Leisure Principle.

The Leisure Principle seeks to explore the complexity of systems that exist between the individual, the collective and the state; where the exchange and consumption of goods and services takes place on a local and global level constructing our sense of self, community and environment.

From the production lines of Henry Ford to 20th century post-Fordism, where language and communication transform methodologies and outputs into new forms of exchange to create the Information economy; the internet has become a new provider of the global trade routes necessary for the import and export of goods and services. The individual, the screen and the manipulation of the subconscious mind have now become highly valuable commodities.

Sunscreen will develop a new international engagement with the networks that exist within the region and aims to encourage a culture of collecting. By distributing the works for free, we hope that digital artworks will be exhibited in peoples homes, places of work and on personal laptops in cafes around the world, and that conversations are initiated around the context of artwork being displayed in this way.